Artificial intelligence could be catastrophic for society, might replace humans altogether

By YS Gill

Unlike the industrial revolution or the scientific & technological revolution, it is for the first time in human history that technology is not only taking over the production process but would also be usurping the decision-making process. It will completely replaces human control at all stages of production.

Let me cite a crude example. Since Guttenberg invented printing, we have had compositors compiling the letters, block makers and printing machines operated by man. Then computers automated the letter compiling and designing process. The computer has eliminated several stages of the legacy printing process. But computers are operated by people. Similarly, modern printing machines are highly automated. Yet they require human intervention. But above all you need a writer to write the book or article which would be printed and an editor, graphic designer and so on. At every stage you need a human being.

But AI will replace humans altogether. It will write the book, make the graphics, design pages and print it - all at one command from the owner of all those machines. While the owner of the machines will gleefully produce books of all genres without employing almost no staff, a whole chain of people working in the publishing industry would be eliminated.

Never in the history of humankind have machines completely replaced humans from the production process. At each stage there has been a human taking decisions, whether at the manual or intellectual level.

Such massively wholesale elimination of humans from production of goods and services would be catastrophic for the society. And all this is likely to happen in a short period of time. It would be particularly disastrous for countries like india, the so-called global South where we have millions and millions with low levels of educational skills or simply uneducated and even illiterate. Therefore we should start talking about the impact of AI on societies like ours in the right earnestness and prepare for this onslaught of 'intelligent' machines.

Comments

Neeraj Nanda said…

100% human control cannot be replaced by AI. Yes, it will replace some human production, in the same way computers replaced some parts of human production (employment). Computers also created so much employment, in fact, lot's of human control took a different form. I mean, IT employment.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of a computer or a robot controlled by a computer to do tasks that are usually done by humans because they require human intelligence and discernment.

For example, Siri (in iphones) works on AI principles. It is helpful to many disadvantaged people (could be a handicapped person) and so on. It is a vast subject and hasty conclusions need to be avoided. Intelligent machines intelligence is not like human intelligence. No AI is superior to human intelligence.
If two men fall in love with one woman, AI cannot solve. It can be solved by human intelligence.

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